Ode to a Nightingale Analysis - Oral Presentation

2 Pages • Essays / Projects • Year: Pre-2021

Good morning, I am professor John Smith. I am a literary critic and the director of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Queensland. I will be deconstructing and identifying the literary techniques employed by John Keats in the famed poem “Ode to a Nightingale”, it was written in the romantic era by the late Keats. An Ode is an elaborately structured lyrical poem which praises an individual or an object. Keats is renowned for perfecting the poetic form, ode. Much of his highly regarded work was the product of opium reveries. He uses abstract language that refers to emotion, this provides the reader with the opportunity to interpret his poem in several ways. Keats is often considered a father figure in the first generation of the English poetic movement known as Romanticism, Romanticism refers to the birth of a new idea. The Romantic movement was a reaction to the emphasis on society and logic present during the age of enlightenment. During the 17th century Philosophers such as John Locke and Sir Isaac Newton promoted notions of individualism, democracy and liberty. Romanticism rejected the rapid industrialisation of society and favoured a connection to nature. The poem illustrates the contrast between the painful mortality that defines human existence and the immortal beauty found in the Nightingale’s sweet melody. Substance abuse and immortality are inextricably linked; these two discourses, foregrounded in the poem were personal to Keats. The young poet was the eldest of five siblings, he abandoned his career in the medical fraternity to pursue poetry. For much of his adult life, Keats indulged in opium to “keep up his spirits” while suffering from tuberculosis.

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